Mojo Queen (8 page)

I reached under my shirt for the mojo bag attached to my belt, making sure he got a look at it even though he probably had no idea what it was. “Look here, son. I am the mojo queen. I don’t need Daniel to back me up, I back him up. So when I tell you to wait in the car for me, you need to do as you’re told. Understand?”

There’s a certain flavor a woman can put in her voice, a certain
Momma’s not putting up with your shit right now
, most men will respond to, especially if they are younger. I used it as shamelessly as the lie that I didn’t need backup.

It worked like a charm. “Yes, ma’am.” He even looked contrite and for a moment I felt bad. I got over that quickly at the thought that sending him away might save his life. I told him where to find my car in the underground lot and waited until he was safely in the elevator.

The room was shrouded in darkness. I had no expectations about finding Gabe alive. He lay on the bed as if asleep, but a blue tint to his lips and the absolute stillness of his body told something different. He no longer had any aura to speak of, not so much as a hint of color. I touched the side of the bed, wondering if he had a girlfriend, if his parents were somewhere in the hospital trying to ask some doctor why their twenty-year-old son had a heart attack.

The lack of an aura told me his spirit was no longer in his body, but would I encounter it somewhere else? Dealing with ghosts hadn’t really taught me much about death. Some people moved on, some didn’t. As far as my experience told me the how and why of a person’s death didn’t seem to have much say in whether someone hung around. If I had known Gabe, really known him, I might be able to hazard a guess. It wasn’t something I had time to think about, though.

Delia shined like volcanic glass in the corner. She stepped out of the shadows with a smile on her face and a swing of her long blond hair. Khakis and a pink twin-set really brought out the evil demon in her.

In a manner I recognized from every obnoxiously fake cheerleader I had ever met, she said, “Well, hey there, you. Nice to see you again.”

“Well aren’t you just the cheerleader from hell. Speaking of which, why don’t you go back where you came from?”

“You know if you don’t learn to mind your own business it just might get you killed.”

I took a step closer, something she clearly had not anticipated. She didn’t move away but her eyes and mouth narrowed. I looked her over, searching for signs of anything breaking through that black. There was nothing. “You in there, Delia?”

She rolled her eyes. “Oh, honey, please. You’re in so far over your head. You just have no idea what you’re dealing with, do you?”

She sounded so pleasant, so cheerful. Even if she weren’t an evil demon I wouldn’t be able to stand her. “I know exactly what you are. Honey.”

She arched an eyebrow and I had to confess, she did it better than I could. A curl of jealousy stabbed me.

Pointing at her with more confidence than I felt, I said, “You are a raven mocker. And I have seen your true visage, which means you’ve only got seven more days to live. Actually, six, I saw you yesterday. So it doesn’t matter what you do. You’re already on your way out of here.”

Delia giggled. Now it was time for me to be disconcerted. “Like I said, you have no idea. Now Roxanne, it is Roxanne, isn’t it?”

Well, damn. It’s never good for the nasties to know your name. I nodded since there was no point in lying.

She continued. “I like you, Roxanne.” She stretched out a hand and stroked the air in front of my chest. I could feel her touch in my mind, in my soul, in whatever that part where my magic emanated from might be called. It made me shudder.

“You have a lot of potential in you. I could teach you so much.”

She twisted her hand into a claw. Nausea churned my insides. I reached for the mojo hand, pulling it out from under my shirt. “There’s nothing I want to learn from you.”

I raised the little red flannel bag in front of me like a shield, sending my will into it and prodding it into action. Immediately I felt relief as she snatched her hand back. A web of indigo lines spread from the bag, crisscrossing into a protective wall through the auric spectrum.

Delia’s eyes turned to slits, anger twisting her beautiful face into a nightmare. For a moment the black of her aura overtook her, a pulsing obsidian emptiness all I could see. She recovered quickly and the perky cheerleader gave me a toothy smile.

“You’re pretty good at amateur hour, sweetie, but do you really think roots and leaves are any match for me?” A nasty derisive laugh slipped from her cotton candy mouth. “I mean, seriously? Do your friends call you Polk Salad Annie?”

Something flared out from me, cracking through the mojo hand’s protective wall and slicing open a cut across Delia’s cheek. It happened so fast I didn’t realize it until blood welled on her skin and fury turned her eyes black. I wobbled a little. That unintended spike of energy had cost me.

Delia stepped as close as the mojo hand allowed. “I don’t need to kill you.” A slight shrug of her slim shoulders dismissed me, my abilities, my very existence. “Don’t particularly want to, either. You know why that is?”

She waited, intending to make me ask. Finally I did, wanting this over so I could breathe normally again. “Why?”

“You don’t matter, Roxanne. You’re just a bug. If you get out of my way, fine. If you don’t, I’ll step on you, and I won’t think twice about it, you insignificant little bitch.”

Fire burst from her aura, framing her in angry red flames. I jumped back, shouting. The flames twisted around her in a tight coil, increasing in speed and covering her completely. Heat slammed into me, knocking me down, wind whipping the cheap hospital curtains. In seconds the flames collapsed in on themselves, tunneling into a ball before disappearing in another rush of hot wind.

There was no sign of Delia. After a few shuddery breaths I got to my feet. So much for my theory about her being a Cherokee raven mocker. Raven mockers didn’t do
that
. I didn’t have time to think about it right now, about her threats or anything else. I had to get Seth and Levi safely tucked away at Daniel’s, pronto.

I shoved the mojo hand in my jeans pocket and headed out. One foot nearly went out from under me and I glanced down to see what I had slipped on. Sand. There was a scattering of sand on the floor, in the spot Delia had stood before disappearing in a ball of fire.

The
what the hells
were really adding up.

* * * *

I waited in the car while Seth went to his room to pack a bag then collect Levi. I waited partly because I still didn’t feel like walking around, and because members of the opposite sex were not allowed past the lobby of the dorms. I slumped in the seat, leaning against the door with my forehead on the window, watching all the college kids--lots of tanning bed tans, preppy clothes, manicures on the girls, clean-cut boys like Seth and his friends. Nicelooking kids, like the nicelooking families in the ghost-filled cul-de-sac.

I didn’t think of my parents often anymore but this brought them to mind, knowing this nice, clean, normal life is what they wanted for me, what they expected of me. I glanced down at my ripped, grubby jeans, black Nine Inch Nails t-shirt over a white long underwear shirt, stained boots. They didn’t like it but they were able to handle it when I had gone to work for a private investigative agency. When I started my own business, and had the poor taste to call myself a paranormal investigator--that’s when I lost them. I heard from them less and less, and now we were down to a few holiday cards a year, maybe one visit. They were embarrassed by me.

They wanted--needed--a daughter who could be like the sweet-faced girls walking around this campus. Like the young mothers in that subdivision, letting themselves be swallowed by a tidal wave of diapers and toys, soccer games and play dates. That wasn’t me, would never be me, and I’d had sense enough to know that early on. It hurt, knowing I was not what my parents wanted, knowing I was nothing but a symbol of regret and perhaps even shame to them. I couldn’t help that, though, couldn’t change their opinion of me, of my life. What I could do was throw everything I had--magic whoop ass, my vampire ancestor, whatever else I could come up with--at keeping Seth and Levi alive, and stopping the demon in Delia.

We drove to Daniel’s in silence. He lived in an outlying community called Stone Fort, in an antebellum home with acreage and only woods for neighbors. When I first started hanging out at his house I alternated between calling him Lestat and Scarlett, until he flashed fang at me in a fit of pique. It made me giggle but I stopped teasing him, figuring I’d poked the bear with a stick enough.

After depositing Seth and Levi in the living room, I found Daniel in the kitchen, one of the few rooms in the house without any windows. We hashed things out over iced tea at the table.

“So now you don’t think she’s this Cherokee raven thing?”

“The way she disappeared, the fire and all, that doesn’t fit with a raven mocker. But the way she killed Gabe and that first boy does. Sorta.”

“What do you mean, sorta?”

I refilled our glasses. “I don’t know. I mean, it seemed to fit, but not really. And now there’s fire.”

“I don’t like fire at all.”

“And sand. Why was there sand?”

“Wait, there was sand?”

“After she disappeared. There was sand all over the floor. I nearly slipped on it.”

“Is there anything else, clue-wise?”

I thought about that. Did her offer of tutoring services count as a clue? Probably not, but as I thought about it I realized it was time to tell Daniel what I’d been hiding. Or show him. I stood, made my way to a pantry that was bigger than my entire kitchen, and found the shelf where he kept spare candles. I brought a fat pillar candle I’d made to the table and set it in front of him. He looked at me, eyebrows raised. I pointed at the candle as I sat, not sure if I’d be able to do this. After several seconds of concentration a nice little flame popped out of the wick.

Daniel crossed his arms, still staring at the candle. He jerked his chin to point at the candle. “Well, ain’t that cute.”

His low-key reaction was not what I expected. “I’ve seen auras since I was a kid, been lighting candles since I was a teenager. I always knew whatever let me do those things helped me with the root work and all that, but I’ve never really taken it out for a test drive before.”

“Can you control it?”

“Yeah.”

He looked at me. “Yeah, you know for a fact you can control it, or yeah, it hasn’t gotten out of control yet?”

“Er.”

He let out a nice big sigh to let me know of all his suffering. “Can you do anything else?”

I shrugged. “Not that I know of.”

“We get this mess with these kids dealt with, I’m going to start reaching out to some contacts. See if we can get you some help.”

Something about that rubbed me the wrong way, as if I were contagious or something in me wasn’t normal, and needed fixing. I’d had about enough of that growing up. “I don’t have some kind of condition.”

“No, what you’ve got is power.”

I started to protest again but he talked over me.

“Would you carry around a gun without knowing how to use it?”

I gave him a skeptical look. “What, now I’m dangerous? I’m being lectured by a vampire about being dangerous? For real?”

Daniel’s face warred between amusement and frustration before settling on neutral. “I’m just saying, I think you should talk to someone about this. That’s all I’m saying.” He rose, walked to the counter where he’d left his cellphone and a notebook, bringing the notebook back to the table with him. “How about we just deal with our demon problem right now?”

It took me all of half a second to agree, but I made him wait for a full three seconds. “You go first.”

“Okay. This guy named his little posse the Brimstone Club. I’m guessing I don’t need to give you a rundown on the old Hellfire Clubs?”

I shook my head. The Hellfire Clubs of two, three hundred years ago in London and Dublin were basically groups of rich men hanging out and partying. Booze, hookers, plenty of mockery of the church to reinforce the image of themselves as naughty, naughty boys, but probably no real devil worship going on despite all the rumors.

Daniel continued. “I ran a trace on the address. The utilities are registered to a Blake Harvill. Here’s the picture on his driver’s license. We need to show it to Seth, make sure this is our guy.”

He handed me a color printout: black hair, dark eyes under heavy black eyebrows, a full mouth, fair skin. Blake Harvill looked like he could blend in with the wallpaper and slip by unnoticed, or burn the memory of himself into your dreams. Or nightmares. I stared for a long moment before something occurred to me. I looked at Daniel and gave the paper a shake. “How’d you get this? You know somebody at the DMV?”

A faint pink blush crept across Daniel’s cheeks, something vampires rarely did. “I hacked into their computer network.” He said this in the same tone of voice someone else would have said they’d checked the TV listings to see what reality show was on tonight. It wasn’t nonchalant enough to make me ignore the blush.

I craned my head to make a show of examining the color on his cheeks. “Did you also hack into the utility company’s computers?”
Dancing With the Stars
or
American Idol
?

“Yes, I did.” I swear he sounded proud of himself.

“What the hell.” I shrugged. “I broke and entered last night.” Though I was far more impressed with his illegal feat.

“Get anything out of those journals?”

“He’s been practicing magic for a long time. Years. Started off on his own. At some point, I think when he was in college, he found someone who acted as a mentor. He wrote a lot about what the man taught him, the lessons, the exercises he gave him to learn energy work. How to use the elements. But never a name. He was very careful not to give the man’s real name. The guy used the name Paralda as a magical name.”

“Suppose he was calling himself
intellect
or
gas
?” Daniel said with a snort of derisive laughter. Paralda is the name of the spirit considered the ceremonial ruler of the element of air. Air rules intellect and its corresponding state is gas, like water’s is liquid, earth is solid and fire is plasma. Fire and plasma… I lost the train of what I’d been talking about, thinking about my little candle-lighting trick and how it paled in comparison to Delia’s big flamey exit. Of course it was the same magic. Sort of. I think. So what did that mean? How far could I take my little trick?